Paul gives you some advice on how to get trade negotiations going and cautions against actions that could stop them dead in their tracks.

As we approach June 1, trading is no doubt becoming a bigger part of league activity for the season. Two months have passed, allowing you to start assessing your team’s strengths and flaws, but injuries and, more than anything else, impatience often fuels trade talks. With that in mind, I wanted to offer up some tips to hopefully improve your trading experience when you start firing up talks.

Don’t tell the league to make you offers on your guys: If you are serious about improving your team via the trade, then sending a mass email with guys you’re willing to part with followed by a call to action for other owners to engage you for those players isn’t the way to go. Rarely do emails that announce the availability of a team’s best players make such an impact that other owners are compelled to do the legwork on a hypothetical deal.

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After a confession, Mike offers some tips to help you hone and improve your trading skills.

I have a confession to make: In fantasy baseball, trading doesn’t come easily to me.

When I started playing fantasy baseball, I took to auctioning relatively quickly. While I enjoyed trading, I frequently wound up on the shorter side of the deal. In some cases, this was simply due to bad luck after the trade, but more often than not, it was because I did a poor job and negotiated myself into an inferior deal.

Our own director of data analysis discusses the past and present of the PITCHf/x, HITf/x and FIELDf/x technology and how it can lead to future breakthroughs.

Our own Harry Pavlidis, Baseball Prospectus’ director of data analysis, has been among the most groundbreaking voices when it comes to using the PITCHf/x, HITf/x and FIELDf/x data that Sportvision tracks in major-league and minor-league parks.

The public face of the Dodgers now rests with Stan Kasten as their president and co-owner. On Monday we caught up with him at the Winter Meetings and asked him about his new position in LA; how the ownership group was assembled; what Magic Johnson brings to the table, and; how that massive TV deal factors into what the Dodgers do, not only now, but years to come.

Few recent club sales have altered the landscape in Major League Baseball as quickly as that of the Los Angeles Dodgers. Whether it was the unprecedented purchase price of $2.15 billion, the flurry of trades that including taking on over $163 million in contract dollars as part of the blockbuster trade with the Red Sox that included Adrian Gonzalez, Josh Beckett and Carl Crawford, or the media rights deal that the club is on the cusp of completing that is reported to be between $6-$7 billion, the Dodgers have become a juggernaut. The public face of the Dodgers now rests with Stan Kasten as their president and co-owner. On Monday we caught up with him at the Winter Meetings and asked him about his new position in LA; how the ownership group was assembled; what Magic Johnson brings to the table, and; how that massive TV deal factors into what the Dodgers do, not only now, but years to come.

New, daily editions of the Hit List, Collateral Damage, and What You Need to Know will combine vital information in one convenient package throughout the season.

Things at BP have never been busier. We hope you’re enjoying the increased content on the site these days and that your workplace productivity has suffered accordingly. We also hope you enjoy setting aside some time to dig into our in-depth opinions and analysis. However, we know not all of you have hours to read about baseball every morning, and we still want to give you a way to digest the day’s most important developments quickly.

That’s where our new daily content comes in. We initiated this change last Friday; we’ll now be running three new or reworked columns every morning from Monday through Friday: the “Daily Hit List,” “What You Need to Know,” and “Collateral Damage Daily.” Below, you’ll find descriptions of what you can expect from each one.

Remembering the late Don Mincher with a look back at the second part of his BP interview from last year.

​While looking toward the future with our comprehensive slate of current content, we'd also like to recognize our rich past by drawing upon our extensive (and mostly free) online archive of work dating back to 1997. In an effort to highlight the best of what's gone before, we'll be bringing you a weekly blast from BP's past, introducing or re-introducing you to some of the most informative and entertaining authors who have passed through our virtual halls. If you have fond recollections of a BP piece that you'd like to nominate for re-exposure to a wider audience, send us your suggestion.

First baseman Don Mincher died on Sunday at age 73. In his memory, we're re-running David Laurila's two-part interview with him, which originally ran as a two-part "Prospectus Q&A" column on January and 11th and 12th, 2011.

Roundtable discussion of the pressing questions facing the NL East teams as we approach the start of the season

1) After a disappointing sophomore campaign, what can we expect of Jason Heyward going forward?
MJ: Jason Heyward had an injury-riddled sophomore season in Atlanta, but there is a lot to like about his chances at a rebound campaign in 2012. His offensive line was deflated by a .260 BABIP, but his peripherals were once again stellar. His 11.6 percent walk rate represented a regression from 2010 but cannot be considered poor, and his .162 ISO likewise dropped from the previous year but did not experience a precipitous fall.

Why the next big step for baseball teams might not be learning something new, but making better use of the information they already have.

“The management and analysis of data, whether it be scouting reports, statistics, medical information or video, is a critical component of our operation. We look forward to developing a customized program that utilizes the most advanced and efficient technology available in the marketplace today to facilitate quicker, easier and more accurate access to all the sources of information we use to make baseball decisions.”—Cubs President of Baseball Operations Theo Epstein, January 2012

“[Statistical analysis] helps but doesn’t tell the whole story of the game. There is a lot of gut feeling you got to make. If you have a stat and see a flashing number and you see that this guy is doing very good against this other guy, you can use that in a game during a key situation. Yes. But we cannot just depend on stats alone. You got to depend on many other things… I don’t like to become a fantasy manager. The goal for a good manager is to have players who are able to manage themselves on the field.”—Unsuccessful Cubs managerial candidate Sandy Alomar Jr., November 2011